In Our Hearts the Piercing Sword
Palm Sunday
Dear Friends,
I am finding it difficult to even begin, but I cannot be pastorally responsible and ignore the recent school shooting in Nashville, not least because it was so close to home on a number of fronts. The children, teachers, families, church members, and neighbors to Covenant School deserve our prayers, and they deserve the changes in a society that would reflect the prayers we offer for peace, safety, and comfort. May God keep the souls of the departed in peace.
Given the presence of the children and teachers in the Day School in my parish, I am grieved that we live in the kind of world where it is a risk to enter a school building, and where restrictions must be placed on family entry for the safety of the children for whom we care. I also know that each tragedy like this one (and they are numerous already in 2023) increases the anxiety and stress of each teacher and parent in an already stressful and anxious culture.
The expectation always seems to be that each institution will individually and autonomously increase its security and manage its protocols in order to be more and more preventative. I certainly don’t deny that we need such safety measures as individual institutions. But I also know that changes must come on a larger scale, and yet we cannot seem to get past status quo when it comes to gun prevalence and violence in this country. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”
As I look toward Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, my mind is drawn to Mary, Mother of God. Hers is the perspective that touches where I am with all of this, and I wonder what she thinks as Jesus processes into the Holy City on the back of a donkey, fronds and cloaks spread before him by the crowds he has brought with him. I wonder if she is remembering the ominous words of the prophet Simeon, who told her only days after Jesus was born, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” A sword will pierce her own soul, too. Is she watching this entry, wondering if this is the last straw that will break the patience of Rome and Temple authorities? How immanent is this inevitable piercing?
I stand with Mary in this moment as a parent and as the Rector of a Parish with a Day School. More often than should be, I have watched my children enter school and I have feared for their safety – not because of what they’re learning from the books they read, nor because of the questions they might ask, but for fear borne of every tragedy like the one in Nashville this week. To hold such fear as a parent is itself a grave injustice. Just as Mary watches Jesus enter Jerusalem, I watch my children going into school and pray that they might not be met by the violence that surrounds us and consumes us every day - both by violent crime and violent laws.
Mary is, of course, pierced to her soul as the prophet foretold, and her grief is captured in the words of the 13th century hymn, Stabat Mater:
As the cross her vigil keeping,
stood the mournful mother weeping,
where he hung, the dying Lord:
there she waited in her anguish,
seeing Christ in torment languish,
in her heart the piercing sword.
As parents and teachers, neighbors and friends weep over this grave violation of life’s sanctity and childhood innocence, they weep alongside Mary, who wept for her own innocent child’s death. Companionship in grief is perhaps the only small consolation for those who await justice and peace in the wake of the apparent annihilation of justice and peace, but companions might at least share the weight of such grief by telling the truth in their solidarity.
Perhaps this Palm Sunday, as we hear of both the entrance into Jerusalem and the trial, abuse, and crucifixion of Jesus, we might reflect on the ways in which the legal system and the public voice aided in this violence against an innocent victim, and the ways in which the religious community, the people, and the political leadership all used their influence and position to crucify the Son of God. The Creed remembers Pilate, but the Gospel remembers the whole Crowd. It is easy to scapegoat the obvious perpetrator; it is more difficult to dismantle and examine the moving parts of our common life (that is, broadly speaking, “politics”) that enable such things to happen.
Christians must ask what doublemindedness leads to an imagined compatibility between discipleship to the Prince of Peace and the demand for immediate and unregulated access to the tools of extreme violence. In other words, Christians must ask whether we want to make violent use the cross or follow the Savior nailed to it.
As we enter Holy Week, we will hear again the story of God’s work of salvation for all of us, and it is fundamentally a work that undoes death and all its tools. We are reminded that God has vindicated the Victim and will not allow such violent means and violent ends to dictate our story. But we should pause here before the Easter end and make sure we stand at the foot of the cross with Jesus’ Blessed Mother, weeping for the reality of violence manifest in the tragedy at Covenant School and our captivity to the power of violence. We should see in the crowd and the leadership our collective refusal to let go of violence, its tools, and its seductive power. We should see in Mary the teachers and parents who hold anxiety, fear, and grief as they and their children make their way in a violent world. And finally, we should see in the Crucified Jesus the innocent children to whom his Kingdom belongs.
God grant us the grace to desire the peace of that Kingdom now and the courage to pursue it with singleness of heart.